Page 14 of Bonds of Magic
“For fuck’s sake, Cory, I don’t know. I can’t read Isaac’s mind. I’m trying to do my job. If you’re really determined not to go through with this lesson, if you want to give into that weakness, then go back to the manor and explain your reasoning to him yourself.”
“It’s not weakness!” I shouted. “It’s just the least bad of a shitty set of options. I’m doing the best I can here. Why can’t anyone see that?”
I realized then how loud my voice had gotten, how close I was standing to Noah. I was basically yelling in his face. I took a step back, feeling my cheeks heat up. I hadn’t meant to explode like that. And now that I’d gotten it out of my system, I felt like an idiot.
I expected him to shout back. To tell me how stupid I was. To kick me out of his cabin and tell me we were done.
What I didn’t expect was for him to inhale deeply, exhale for even longer, and apologize.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed, then scratched at his chin, where his five o’clock shadow was rapidly becoming a fully-fledged beard. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper with you. I apologize.”
I was so taken aback that I found myself saying, “It’s fine,” before I even knew I was speaking.
“It’s not,” he said. “Really, it’s not. If you want to tell Dean Mansur, I’ll understand. I can’t imagine you’d be comfortable working with me after that.”
“I mean, I yelled too.”
I looked down at my feet. I couldn’t parse the emotion I saw in Noah’s hazel eyes, but I wasn’t going to admit that his gaze made me more uncomfortable than shouting ever could.
Did he really think I was weak? My chest tightened. I didn’t want him to, and I couldn’t explain why. Half an hour ago, I’d been convinced that I should leave Vesperwood tonight, and now…
“You have to do what you think is right,” Noah said after a long moment. “I don’t know if this makes a difference, but I understand the desire to give up. I wanted to, for a long time. But eventually, I decided that I owed the dead better than that. I couldn’t bring them back, but I could avenge their deaths, and that’s something.”
I looked up. I wasn’tgiving up. But he kept talking, not giving me a chance to speak.
“Cling to vengeance, if that’s what keeps you going. Let it hold you up. Until you’re strong enough to hold yourself up, and do what needs to be done.”
Vengeance. Was that what I wanted? To avenge Erika’s death?
If I were being honest, I’d never even thought of that. I’d never considered myself strong enough totakevengeance. I wasn’t sure I could. But I knew one thing.
I didn’t want Noah to think I was weak.
I didn’t know what would happen if I got control of my power. There was so much Noah and Dean Mansur weren’t telling me. There was so much I wasn’t telling my friends. It was a thorny problem, and any way I turned, I was bound to bleed.
But with Noah’s eyes boring into mine, I couldn’t say no.
“Fine,” I said heavily. The tug inside me was screaming anyway, begging for me to fall asleep and dream. It was easiest to give in. “Fine. Let’s do this. The lesson, the whole—whatever. How do we start?”
Noah held my gaze another moment, like he wasn’t sure I meant what I’d said. Then he nodded and pointed to the couch. “Sit.”
I did. He pulled a beat-up wooden chair out from the kitchen table and turned it to face me. It had a deep, squiggly gouge on one arm, like someone had taken a pocketknife to it and tried to carve their name. I looked from the chair to Noah’s face.
“Tell me what you and Seb were working on,” he said.
“Seb?” I asked.
“Professor Romero,” he corrected himself. “How far have you progressed?”
I told him, and watched as his face went from mildly interested, to concerned, to surprised, to aghast.
“How many weeks have you been working on this?” he asked. He didn’t seem to want an answer, because he kept right on talking. “And you still can’t even remember who you are or what you’re doing in a dream?”
I fought the urge to look away. “It’s not like I had a real incubus teaching me.”
I could hear how pathetic that excuse sounded as I said it.
Then I frowned. Whyhadthe dean wanted Noah to teach me? He’d seemed so sure that Noah could, which didn’t make sense. Noah was our combat professor. He wasn’t even a witch, much less paranormal. Unless…
